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Fonseca Bicentennial

Posted on 10th May 2015 |

The Port house Fonseca celebrated its bicentenary with a dinner at The Wallace Collection in London on Portugal Day, 10th June. With Taylor, Fonseca and Croft (the houses that make up the Fladgate Partnership) having eschewed Douro wine, the star billing for the evening fell to the Ports: a melifluous Fonseca 40 Year Old Tawny (served with Foie Gras) and two vintage Ports. Word went round that there was a significant amount of bottle variation with one of the 1985 Imperials (6 litres, no less) tragically corked. I tasted two very different examples of Fonseca 1963 (see below).

Fonseca 1985 ****

Decanted from an Imperial (6 litres): still very deep and youthful in colour and remarkably demure on the nose for a wine that is now thirty years old (could this be the influence of the Imperial?), underlying restrained, tight knit berry fruit; far from giving its all, this wine is nonetheless sweet, fleshy and firm, very much in the spirit of the best 1985s, it retains its ripe tight-knit tannic grip which leads to a lovely long spicy finish. Confirmation that Fonseca is still the very best of a very variable vintage overall. 18

Fonseca 1963 **** / *****

I was fortunate to have two goes at this wine: the first, brick red with a pink rim, fragrant and floral, soft, sweet and elegant with gentle tannic grip, but soft and redolent of a nutty tawny on the finish. The second, seemingly identical in colour but with the wonderful focus and dark chocolate intensity that I would expect from this great vintage. Spell binding depth, like a back hole, with bitter chocolate and thick cut marmalade in perfect balance. Outstanding. 17 to the first bottle, 19.5 to the second.

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I had forgotten just how much I enjoy Port until I started tasting the recently released 2018s. With Covid-19, lockdown and the recent warm weather in the UK I have not been opening bottles of vintage Port. My wife is not a fortified fan (despite hailing from Madeira) and I have had no one to share a bottle of Port with. Sad but true.

Every year the Manchester Tennis and Racquet Club (home of one of the few Real Tennis courts in the UK) ask me to host a Port dinner to which members bring their own wines and the club contributes a bottle or two from their own cellar.

Don Schliff began collecting Port in 1969, inspired by a restaurant named the Studio Grill in Hollywood where Vintage Port was served by the glass. For many years the restaurant’s owner Ardison Philips organized vertical Port tastings on the Saturday between Christmas and New Year.